


Letting You Go is Easy (I've Done It a Hundred Times)

by Make_It_Worse



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Background Relationships, Cigarettes, Developing Relationship, Gavin Reed Needs a Hug, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Sex, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Therapy, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unrequited Love, Upgraded Connor | RK900 Has a Different Name, Upgraded Connor | RK900 Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-29 11:35:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20795996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Make_It_Worse/pseuds/Make_It_Worse
Summary: Before he can think too hard on why the words tighten into a hideous lump in his chest, Niles spits, “If this isn’t doing it for you, you don’t need to keep coming over anytime I call.” Even though Gavin isn’t looking at him, he can’t help but gesture at himself as he speaks.Nothing about Gavin’s stance indicates he heard a word Niles spoke. Niles is on the verge of booting Gavin from his postage stamp apartment and stripping the sheets of his scent when Gavin mumbles, “Y’ever think about the one that got away?”Niles freezes at the question like a chess piece in danger of being knocked down.





	Letting You Go is Easy (I've Done It a Hundred Times)

Gavin leans over the Juliet balcony of the apartment, pulling deep from a beer bottle. With the label picked clean, Niles can’t tell what sort it is other than brown. Niles’ eyes scan down the taut ridge of Gavin’s spine. It culminates in the soft swell of an ass currently clad in pajama bottoms that are both too long and too tight.

Knocking back the last dregs of an IPA, Niles tosses the empty can in the direction of the trash. He misses and it clatters and rolls to the general obscurity underneath his secondhand dining table. Money was tight and med school wouldn’t afford him luxuries until he finished his residency. He was just over the crest of thirty and could almost taste the money. Not for the first time, he curses following in his brother’s footsteps.

Gavin was doing pretty all right for himself since he’d made detective. His apartment was nicer, his beer was fancier, and yet—

“Are those mine?” Niles tugs at the waist of the pajamas hugging Gavin’s hips. Niles can see the wrinkles in his skin where the elastic has chewed.

Gavin glances down where Niles’ fingers brush against his bare skin but no emotion registers on his face, “S’pose so.”

Niles frowns, recognizing the dour mood that’s about to descend. Their relationship was casual and it wasn’t his place to pry, but, still, Gavin’s unpredictable temperament after sex was irritating. The potential for the bad attitude and curt replies was a recent development with baffling origins. He was almost certain it would happen tonight given that Gavin had pulled out and escaped to Niles’ bathroom to clean up without so much as a, “Was it good for you?”

Before he can think too hard on why the words tighten into a hideous lump in his chest, Niles spits, “If this isn’t doing it for you, you don’t need to keep coming over anytime I call.” Even though Gavin isn’t looking at him, he can’t help but gesture at himself as he speaks.

Nothing about Gavin’s stance indicates he heard a word Niles spoke. Niles is on the verge of booting Gavin from his postage stamp apartment and stripping the sheets of his scent when Gavin mumbles, “Y’ever think about the one that got away?”

Niles freezes at the question like a chess piece in danger of being knocked down. He peers at Gavin’s profile trying to see through the thick skin hiding his thoughts.

“Why?” It’s a wound Niles doesn’t want to examine so he lobs the ball back into Gavin’s court with the quiet, desperate syllable.

“I fuck things up a lot. I’m a shitty boyfriend and a worse person.” Gavin pauses to take another swig and Niles remains silent. “I’d never been in love before. Didn’t know what it looked like or felt like. Not ‘til I lost it, anyway.”

Something hot and unpleasant slithers up Niles’ throat, locking it tighter with each word Gavin speaks.

“It’s why we—why I prefer coming here. The less I let people in, the less they can hurt me.” Gavin pulls a beat-up pack of cigarettes from his pocket and it’s a brand Niles doesn’t recognize. The tip flares to life in a red-hot warning before settling into a dull, angry glower.

“What happened?” Niles hears himself ask the question without truly wanting to know the answer—a bad habit that no amount of disasters had been able to cure him of repeating. He’s been hurt before; he can recognize the symptoms of it on Gavin’s face.

Gavin inhales the smoke deep into his lungs before coughing it back out again, “Christ, it’s been years since I actually smoked one of these.”

Niles wrinkles his nose. He doesn’t care for smoking much anyway, “Then why—”

“They’re his,” Gavin says flatly before sucking in another mouthful of nicotine and tar.

He’s sapped the cigarette down to a nub before Niles finally summons the courage to repeat the question, “What happened?”

Dull grey-green eyes flick in his direction before lighting up the next to last stick in the pack, “His life imploded—lost his kid in an accident. Not his fault, but he—I couldn’t…” Gavin fades off and inhales a few short puffs to buy time, “It seemed like there was no going forward anymore. He just stopped moving. Started drinking.”

When Gavin falls silent again, Niles attempts to console him, “That doesn’t sound like it was your fault either.”

Gavin whirls, flat eyes suddenly blazing, “You think I don’t know that? He wouldn’t _try_. He wouldn’t do _anything_. Just drank and drank and wanted to fuck with a limp whiskey dic—” Gavin’s mouth snaps shut with such force and abruptness, Niles wonders if he’s having a seizure. Gavin’s shoulders hunch so tight, he looks as if he may shatter at the slightest touch.

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” Niles says quietly, at a loss. Gavin’s clearly working through some kind of personal trauma, but he has no idea how it relates to himself much less their intermittent sex life.

“My therapist says I’m blaming myself for not being able to fix him.” Gavin flicks the burned-out cigarette over the balcony onto the sidewalk below. Niles doesn’t have it in him to admonish him for it; he’ll go get it once Gavin leaves.

Gavin crosses the apartment on bare feet, squatting down to dig around in the fridge for one of his expensive stouts. Popping the top with an old, battered class ring on his middle finger, he stares at the faded, bulky halo.

Gavin flops to the couch, much closer to Niles than he usually sits. He worries at the ring before pulling it off and placing it on the shabby coffee table. At this range, Niles can see the year 2003 stamped into the soft gold. Refusing to look at the ring now that it’s off his hand, Gavin takes a long, slow swallow of beer.

When he speaks, he picks up where he left off as if there was no interruption, “Therapist is off her fucking rocker. How am I supposed to fix someone who lost a kid? Told her there was no coming back from that; not just because some guy he fucks wants him to anyway.”

Gavin’s voice pitches high and tight on the last words and Niles can tell they’re getting to the heart of what is bothering him. He finds himself considering reaching out to take Gavin’s hand, but the smaller man is on his feet and back at the balcony before he can act on it. Something about his story rings familiar, but Niles sets it aside for later examination.

Gavin stares at the last cigarette for a long, silent minute before lighting it, snubbing it out gently, and then lighting it again a few seconds later. He smokes it as if each disappearing millimeter shaves off an equivalent amount of his heart.

“What was his name?” Niles asks, attempting to get Gavin talking again. The pain radiates off him in waves and Niles wouldn’t feel right letting the conversation end there.

Gavin exhales the word like a smoker tasting his last nicotine cloud, “Hank.”

The name plucks at a memory more strongly as if trying to remember a newly learned song, but the particulars elude him. Niles wrinkles his forehead, trying to sift through recent memories without success, “What’s he doing now?”

Gavin turns to meet Niles’ gaze head-on, no longer flat or angry. Mostly, he looks defeated, “Dating your brother.”

A deafening roar fills Niles’ ears at the words.

_Call me Hank_, the man had said.

Connor’s new boyfriend. The one he’d met at a grief support group. The one Niles had joined for coffee just last week.

Connor’s dating Gavin’s ex-boy—

“So I was wondering,” Gavin’s bitter voice grabs Niles’ frantic thoughts by the neck and shakes hard, “since you know us both, what does Connor have that I don’t?” Each word grows harder than a hammer as Gavin speaks and Niles’ throat constricts tighter under the look he gives him.

When Niles does little more than stare wide-eyed, Gavin sneers and turns back to the balcony. He sucks viciously on the cigarette, forcing it down to the filter at top speed. He ejects it out the window to join the other on the ground. He’s halfway into his coat and shoes before Niles’ hand finds his.

Gavin jerks hard at the contact, spinning slightly with the force of it. He looks ridiculous in his ill-fitting, borrowed pajama pants and leather jacket. His bare chest and navel stand out comically as the pajama bottoms puddle around his shoes.

Niles doesn’t feel like laughing.

“Connor didn’t fix him,” Niles tightens his grip around Gavin’s wrist. “He’s still…god, Gavin. The man isn’t suddenly cured because Connor wished for it. That’s not how it works. He got help for himself; Connor came later.”

Gavin pulls away again, but with less vehemence, “You a shrink now, too?” At a look from Niles, Gavin mutters, “My therapist said something a lot like that.”

Gavin’s righteous outrage fades rapidly into exhaustion, and he doesn’t resist when Niles pulls him close; his arms hang limp when their chests touch. They rise to fist into Niles’ shirt when Niles wraps his arms around him firmly.

Even though Gavin is silent, his small tremors rock them both. Niles feels dampness on his shirt and waits until Gavin’s shaking subsides, “Let’s go to bed.”

Gavin offers meager protest. He’s never stayed the night before. Most mornings after, Niles would find a note or a coffee on the counter. Niles ignores the words that belie Gavin’s actions—he slips out of his shoes and hangs up his coat as he mumbles perfunctory objections. Niles leads him by the hand, collapsing into a bed that still smells like Gavin and sex.

He thinks of the open window looking out over the balcony but decides it can wait. Gavin’s limbs are tangled with his and he doesn’t feel like sorting out which belongs to who. Besides, he can hear the trees rustle with a breeze that promises soothing rain; cocooned in blankets, they fall asleep as a rumble of thunder splits open the sky. The discarded cigarette butts twitch then roll as the wind picks up. As the first drops of rain darken the sidewalk, the stubby filters race to the sewer drain before tumbling into darkness.

When Niles wakes in the morning, Gavin is still there. Hank’s ring is staring at him from Gavin’s finger.

When he tears his eyes away from it to look at Gavin’s face, his eyes are open. He curls into Niles’ chest with a whispered, “I’m sorry.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/WorseMake).


End file.
